The Kirindi Oya Irrigation and Settlement Project was inaugurated in 1979, and is a major development project in the South East quadrant of Sri Lanka. In its scope and magnitude it is second only to the massive Accelerated Mahaweli Project. According to the loan agreement which was undertaken to fund the project, the Agrarian Research and Training Institute (ARTI) was commissioned with the task of monitoring and evaluating the project in accordance with the policies and criteria of the funding agencies. This assignment commenced with a pre-project socio-economic survey and subsequently, several other studies covering different components and management oriented problems in the project were carried out. This study on employment generation is a result of the socio-economic survey.